new specs reveal keybord/mouse support

[theman101]

I was just looking at what photo formats the archos 5 supports, and i noticed they updated it revealing new stats and usb device support.
http://www.archos.com/products/imt/arch ... al&lang=en

[Asheboy]

Ohh. I hate the possible word. Nice one for noticing.

[kb]

It's always been possible to attach USB keyboard and mouse, etc., to the 605. All the plumbing is there at the Linux level. The problem is that the Archos software chose not to support them. I use a USB keyboard under Qtopia on my 604wifi and it works just fine.

[system16]

wow, archos actually put up proper tech specs for this one. nice to know the actual speed of the processor.

128mb of ram doesnt really sound enough though. in comparison the ipod touch has 512.

i wonder if the processor is the version with open gl support. might make up for rhe lack of ram in some tasks. anyone know?

[Charbax]

128mb of ram doesnt really sound enough though. in comparison the ipod touch has 512.

The iPod Touch has 128mb as well.

Not sure it means much on embedded devices. I think other places there are some types of fast access memory controllers and stuff that matter more, and of course the processor, cause you don't want to multi-task too much on embedded devices, you'd rather quickly resume applications in their previous state and have as little amount of processes running at the same time. But on the other hand, each process gets full optimized processing and hardware acceleration while it's running, and the user notices no difference. Full screen applications are actually more user friendly, no need for the applications to be in windows.

[theman101]

does anyone know why it needs two processors? would one be dedicated to a specific task?

[HellFury]

does anyone know why it needs two processors? would one be dedicated to a specific task?

Let me give you a few examples of multi-processing:

Play music & Browse the web (no lag in browsing)
Play a video & play the audio file of that video (so the video process can be used for higher resolution calculations)

Normally a processor would share the processing power of 1 processor, so it could calculate 1/2 of a dual core processor could handle.

[Charbax]

does anyone know why it needs two processors? would one be dedicated to a specific task?

For example, when you are listening to music while you browse, the music part is taken care of by the DSP processor and the browsing part is taken care of the ARM processor.

ARM is for interfaces and for rendering websites. The DSP is for playing much more hardware intensive things but also much more specific things such as video playback, audio playback, flash video playback, video recording, video outputs and more stuff like that.

[Chengbin]

The processor in Archos 5 is a dual core?

I personally think 128MB of RAM on the Archos 5 isn't enough. It should be 256MB to allow more tabs and other stuff like flash. (I'm not saying that the current A 5 is not fast enough). I don't think 128MB is enough for HD decoding as well.

[Charles]

I think the processor is limited to a 128MB of memory usage.

I have read that about the Q5 / P5, I think it's the same for the Archos 5.

Edit : The Archos 5 has a Cortex processor + DSP. It isn't dual-core.

[theman101]

the iPod touch has only one processor, and of can do all that exept hd

[Charbax]

the iPod touch has only one processor, and of can do all that exept hd

Nah, the ipod touch can't even play video formats at DVD resolution and full DVD quality bitrates, it can't play DivX, can't play flash video formats, it can't record and output video to TV in the same quality using component and HDMI, it can't upscale DVD resolution video to HDTV and much more that the ipod touch can't do.

[Chengbin]

I believe the iPod Touch's hardware is capable of decoding divx and xvid formats at DVD resolution and good bitrates (2M/s), I think Apple just don't want to.

What do you mean by full DVD quality bitrate? If you're talking about 9.8Mbps, then the Archos can't even do that (except MPEG 2). I'm not sure about the Archos 5, but my 404 can't decode XVID at 9.8Mbps. The limit is around 6.5Mbps, which is still very impressive for a small player.

[Crlrhxphn]

He probably means the bitrates that it takes to make a video dvd quality and if you use divx or h.264 you can achieve dvd quality videos around 1500 bits a second without seeing a difference between the dvd and converted video. In almost all ways it can improve on the picture quality while making it 1/3 the size of the dvd. Dont forget that the 5 is 4 times as powerfull as the 404. I personally plan on getting a blu-ray drive and starting to convert from that.

[Chengbin]

He probably means the bitrates that it takes to make a video dvd quality and if you use divx or h.264 you can achieve dvd quality videos around 1500 bits a second without seeing a difference between the dvd and converted video. In almost all ways it can improve on the picture quality while making it 1/3 the size of the dvd. Dont forget that the 5 is 4 times as powerfull as the 404. I personally plan on getting a blu-ray drive and starting to convert from that.

It is the GPU that is doing the decoding, not the CPU.

[system16]

Yeah some websites say that the ipod touch has 512mb of ram while others say 128mb. Wikipedia quotes apple as having said 128 so I think it must have 128mb.

[Charbax]

I have used this Fellowes Stowaway foldable full sized USB keyboard since I bought it for my PMA400 in 2004:



It still works great. But I would find it useful if there was a more compact design available since then such as:













The idea is to have a foldable USB keyboard that when folded is compact enough to fit in the other pocket. My Fellowes Foldable USB Keyboard is compact enough when folded, but when folded up, it folds into a brick that is slightly larger then the Archos 5 250GB. It'd be better if there was a thinner and more compact full sized foldable USB keyboard..

I wonder if Stowaway has a USB version without that PDA stand thing of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvMQphEFaE0

[Typhoeus]

If you have the money, there are virtual laser keyboards.

Pretty cool and definitely an eye catcher.

[Charbax]

Yup good idea, I made a video of the Celluon laser keyboard: http://techvideoblog.com/cebit/celluon-cl-800bt/

It actually works pretty fine, and you can use it also as a mouse pad, which is pretty cool. But your fingers can get irritated depending on the table surface you are typing on..

[system16]

Liking the look of some of those fold out keyboards and it would be nice if archos put support in for usb keyboards.

But with all the talk about additional keyboards, new docks, emulators and all the other add-ons, we have to remember what the archos was built for. At some point you may as well just give up and get a laptop :P